Chicken Cordon Bleu Bake, the Winning Casserole Party ’10 Entry

This past Monday, the 6th Annual Casserole Party was just as promised the biggest and best one yet. The casseroles were good, but what was truly golden was the giving community spirit from everyone there. This event was free and open to the public, and any donations received was purely optional. Yet between the 44 teams of chefs who entered their casseroles in the cook-off, its organizer Emily Farris, the Brooklyn Kitchen who held the event at their space, Brooklyn Brewery who donated beer, the judges, their appetites, and all the volunteers and fellow foodies who came, ate and helped out, we turned what could have been an average gluttonfest into fun, charitable mission that raised more than $1,000 for the Greenpoint Interfaith Food Team (GIFT) and their weekly soup kitchen efforts. Because everyone needs to eat!

Cream of Cauliflower Casserole with Cured Salmon

So I entered the Casserole Party this year. It was a bit of a last-minute decision: the same afternoon, I chatted with the annual cookoff's hostess Emily Farris on Let's Eat In. It was enough to persuade me to run home and rummage through the kitchen to come up with something fast. After all, that's what a casserole is best for, to combine whatever delicious things you have on hand in one dish. A casserole dish, to be exact. Well, I had a crisp head of orange cauliflower, and some home-cured salmon from my CSA stash. It seemed like a pretty good start.

Apricot-Glazed Salmon with Bok Choy

I can't think of too many other proteins you can't try this same dish out on -- whether it be fish, a pork chop, or a hunk of firm tofu. It's simple: a seared steak (of some sort) brushed with a little sauce while it finishes in the oven. But I'm lucky, because the protein I have most readily on hand happens to be wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon.

A Very Manhattan New England Clam Chowder

If you had to name two things that go brilliantly when thrown together in a pot, especially when you're at the shore in the last throes of summer, you might not immediately pick clam and tomatoes. Lobster and corn might come to mind, with potatoes a tagalong or alternate. But it's the first combo that I'd go with from now on. It was the basis of the best soup I've had in a while, just in time for chillier nights.

Reason For Not Eating Out #35: The Whole Side of the Story

A cook's gotta do what a cook's gotta do. That usually includes dealing with the whole vegetable or grain from its raw to fully-cooked and plated states. Sometimes, it means the same for an animal. And the way I see it, all the better for the person cooking it.

Apple Dumplings with Brown Sugar Rum Sauce

Happy Chinese New Year! Thanks to all the "students" who came to the Brooklyn Kitchen last night for me and Winnie's dumpling class. I hope you mark a dumpling party on your calendars soon. That was some tight work all around with the homemade dough -- this is tricky stuff to roll out and fold when making dumplings for the first time! Be sure to check out the Brooklyn Kitchen blog and Winnie's blog soon for her braised oxtail filling; a basic pork and chive filling can be found here. And for a less traditional, completely un-Chinese dumpling recipe, keep reading... It's been far too long since I've made dumplings, so before the class, I wanted to brush up on my pinching technique. I took the opportunity of a joint birthday party between three friends on Friday to make a few batches of a certain dessert dumpling.

The Year of the Ox (Dumplings)

Chinese New Year is coming up, and as with every holiday save for maybe President's Day, that means one thing to me: FOOD! Great food. Excesses of food. And the first food that comes to mind for this one is dumplings. But instead of throwing a dumpling party like I did last year, forcing my friends to roll up their sleeves in the wrapping process, the talented food writer Winnie Yang and I are going to teach a class on dumpling making at The Brooklyn Kitchen!

Gifts for the Not Eating Out-er on your list

'Tis the weekend to get some gifts! It seems like no media outlet can resist offering their two cents on budget-friendly holiday gifts this season. (I'm listening to Sound Check right now doling out their musical gift picks.) And this year, neither can I. I usually don’t dish about gift-giving, or other modes of culturally forced buying on this site (alright, come and give me the Scrooge speeches!), unless it’s about giving to charities. But there’s one little reason I’m making an exception: the troubled economy. So here are a few ways to spread your generosity and cheer without troubling your bank account.

The King of Cauliflower Casserole

You know what? After all the lovely compliments you've given me on my Orecchiette and Arugula casserole, I'm not sure how it would have fared, head-to-head, with the winner of the fourth annual Casserole Party. Nor the rest of the amazing twenty-eight casseroles that were brought to the cook-off this past Monday. Emily Farris, author of Casserole Crazy, has clearly inspired casserole craziness in Brooklyn since she created the cook-off four years ago. Of the very best kind.

Who’s the Top Ramen?

Last year it was the Bodega Challenge, this year it was the instant Ramen-Off, I swear, Harry and Taylor of The Brooklyn Kitchen have a thing for bringing out the best in the worst of foods. Perhaps terrified that I would endanger this reputation by bringing in something awful (i.e. my bodega-inspired Potato Chips au Gratin), they named me judge for this year's Ramen-Off, held in celebration of the two-year anniversary of the independent kitchen store. Mission accomplished, if so.

From Instant to Awesome Ramen (and The Brooklyn Kitchen Ramen-Off)

Look, I know we're all frightened about the economy, but that doesn't mean we have to resort to eating instant ramen every day... Not convinced? Okay, neither am I. What I meant to say, really, is that you don't have to resort to eating blahmen every day. As long as there's still a few leafy green vegetables left to pick, and as long as eggs aren't a luxury item (which they actually might become soon), you can still cook up a mean bowl of soup noodles using your bodega-bought block of instant ramen. Or how about something new altogether, with said noodles? Hear, hear, Brooklyn's favorite kitchen store is calling on folks to do just that.

4 Things Everyone Can Learn from a little Pig Butchering

Okay, so maybe that's a pretty big pig. Last week, I shared with you four lessons I learned in the geeky, futuristic world of high-tech food science. Perhaps I should have preceded it with this post, on a much more primitive practice: butchering. Still, it requires no less skill, experience and serious passion to hack up a hog than it does to turn sauces into silly string. I'm grateful to have learned these lessons at a sold-out pig butchering class at the Brooklyn Kitchen, under the expert guidance of Tom Mylan.